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Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study
w1z4rd writes "According to an article in the Guardian, scientists and economists have been offered large bribes by a lobbying group funded by ExxonMobil. The offers were extended by the American Enterprise Institute group, which apparently has numerous ties to the Bush administration. Couched in terms of an offer to write 'dissenting papers' against the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, several scientists contacted for the article refused the offers on conflict of interest grounds."
- Probable temperature rise between 1.8C and 4C
- Possible temperature rise between 1.1C and 6.4C
- Sea level most likely to rise by 28-43cm
- Arctic summer sea ice disappears in second half of century
- Increase in heatwaves very likely
- Increase in tropical storm intensity likely
It's a 20 page report and I know we're all really busy but I think this is the first document one can read and really catch up on what's been decided recently in the scientific community.I haven't seen anyone discredit this panel or this document yet. What I have seen is criticism from right wing papers about this report either being "unsurprising" or "offering no hope, grim." On the other hand, leftist papers have been in a sort of "we're doomed" sort of mode. I haven't really seen anyone stepping up to the plate and telling the public that it's on our consciouses now. We are responsible--if you have the money, start paying more for green products or products from carbon neutral companies. Increase incentive for companies to be carbon neutral. Right now, as a consumer, I don't know how I would figure out if the car I bought comes from a more or less environmentally friendly company. Consumers need to start driving this change because it sure the hell isn't going to be our ignorant president.
Also, Zonk, I think you mean Mr. Chase knows why, Salmon P. Chase is on the $10,000 bill. Offering nominal fees for paper and pen to write reports is one thing but when the incentive is a large percentage of my yearly income, I think Exxon should be ousted as scientifically backwards assholes.
My work here is dung.
Can someone publish the names and phone numbers of these scientists so I can lobby to get them into top positions in government?
Work smarter, not harder.
If a report were issued that global warming was not manmade and a thinktank offered a similar reward, would you also call it a bribe?
If (and this is a very strong IF) they do this right, what they are doing is using money to accelerate the scientific debate. If there are errors in the report that other scientists can find, there is now incentive to find them and weed them out. It's the scientific process pushed forward by money.
The downside of it will, of course, be that a lot of "scientists" will make wild claims in an attempt to collect on this cash and muddy the waters. But I think in the long run this might actually speed up the process by which we arrive at a definite conclusion to the debate and finally start seriously working on solutions.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
This is just propaganda from the liberal controlled greeny environmental industry, making shit up to slander the good name of an honest, productive and responsible corporation. Everyone knows global warming scientists are rich as Midas from all the money funneled to them by their commie-pinko-socialist masters, of course they don't need to take money from an honest corporation! Just think, this poor industry, barely making ends meet, scrapes up a little money to try to help fund some REAL SCIENCE, and these vicious intelelctuals turn on them like a pack of wild dogs. /right-wing-parody
Anyone want to place a bet on how many of these 'ideas' are going to become official talking points on Faux News?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I wonder if ExxonMobil is actually still funding the American Enterprise Institute. Late last year they announced their intention to stop funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and I was assuming (I know, dangerous) that they were going to stop funding all similar institutes. Here is their official try-to -please-everyone-without-admitting-any-guilt statement for those who are interested.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
$10K is a pretty damn paltry bribe. $100K research grants are pretty common for those in the sciences, with $1M+ programs not unheard of. As for personal salary, a PhD college professor in the sciences is easily at $100k+/year when you include summer salary.
If you are going to bribe someone, make sure you at least get in the right ballpark of "interesting". Trash my carreer for $10K? Don't make me laugh.
Test your net with Netalyzr
What's Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi Minister of Information is up to these days?
I'm sure he's looking for work.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
...that every single move taken by the tobacco industry in the last 15 years is going to be repeated in exact fashion by the oil industry?
- This particular case is exactly the same as the tobacco industry paying to have scientists say there was no connection between smoking and cancer (or any of the other ailments).
- The paying off of lobbyists is normal, but was made infamous by "big tobacco". Now it's "Big Oil" making sure senators get to make frequent holidays in the Grand Caymans.
- Some might even point out that all of the gas guzzling autos are the cool toys for the younger crowd...just as people might say Joe Camel was targeted at America's youth. I, of course, would not make such a brash statement; but only to say some might.
There are plenty of other examples of the pattern being repeated, but I'm too tired to write them all out. Short version, the only thing that's changed is the product
- Nobody would know what RTFA meant if it didn't need to be said all the time
Now before we all cry bloody murder, why are we calling this a bribe? There was a report released on global climate change. One company is hoping that there were shortcomings and inaccuracies in that report. That company doesn't have the scientific capability to refute the findings, so they are hiring scientists to document any and all shortcomings for them.
As far as I can tell, there is no proof that they asked the scientists to lie. Unless, of course, you have already made up your mind that global warming is a fact and any attempt to refute it is corrupt and evil.
The company involved is obviously biased, but I don't see an attempt to refute a study as evil in and of itself.
There is no impartial scientist to be found. As earth is a closed system -- we're all here for the duration -- we all have a vested interest in the future. It makes little difference whether a study is financed by a corporation like ExxonMobil or by a green group with deep pockets; both have agendas, and in the final analysis, either the scientific methods are sound, or they're not, regardless of who is funding.
The problem up to now has been the tendency of many to assume that a) because a study is endorsed by scientists, it must therefore be valid, and b) that if it is financed by a green organization or a government, it is therefore more trustworthy than if it were funded by a multinational corporation. Both assumptions are false. Of all the scientists on the planet, only a very small percentage are competent in the the analysis of climatological data, and of those, even fewer are knowledgeable with respect to the long term studies involved. As to funding and impartiality, every group I can think of has an agenda here, be they environmental groups, governments, or corporations.
What is clearly needed is a rational study by qualified scientists, and discussion and even attacks on the conclusions drawn by other groups of equally qualified scientists. This is essentially the kind of thing that is done to keep scholarly journals on track. Articles are refereed by people with knowledge and experience in the field.
Finally, one of the chief problems in trying to analyze the existing data is that we possess reasonably accurate data for only a very brief period of time, and from those data, we hope to extrapolate global long term trends. In undertaking that task, trends are extrapolated forward and backward, and assumptions are stacked upon assumptions. The further we get from today, in either direction, the less reliable are those assumptions. And let us not forget that we are still unable to reliably predict the weather more than a few days in advance, yet we have sufficient hubris to believe we can predict 100 years forward.
--- Bill
What you're saying makes perfect sense concerning the debate amoungst scientists, but when it comes to the popular debate, large amounts of funding will result in a proportional amount of material. Since the population at large don't have the wherewithall to analyse the findings, they look instead to the volume of the work produced and the reputation of those producing it.
In the abscence of the capability to analyse the science itself, it help to know where the funding comes from. If the science is then picked up by a scientist who's sources appear not to be compromised, then it is reasonable to assume that it was sound science in the first place. This filter layer is the meaning of peer review. In the abscence of this filter layer, it is reasonable for the population to know that the funding is selecting for particular conclusions, thus possibly prejudicing the data or the analysis of that data.
Knowledge of funding is part of the mechanism by which the non-scientist protects him or herself against junk science.
Wikileaks, no DNS
If you could scientifically (key word) demonstrate that humans made no significant contribution to global warming (within a certain margin of error, of course), you'd have no problem getting grants - especially from the current administration. (OK, maybe not "no problem". You also have to be able to write halfway well. Let's just say it'd be easier than if you were just a conformist scientist who didn't produce any novel research.) They do ultimately control the purse strings, and if there was some grand conspiracy going on, do you really think that Bush and friends wouldn't be using their influence to end/replace it?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I guess they took the expression, "the marketplace of ideas" a bit too literally.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
This kind of attempt to brible people to peddle an agenda should carry consequences similar to that of obstruction of justice like tampering with a witness. This situation is tampering with science -as best understood. And the "scientists" who support or "cherry-pick" their data should be held to the same standards as front-people are held accountable if they (mis)-represent a product they know to be short of what is claimed --as it is in some states.
If these people get paid to mis-represent data (differing from soomeone who is simply on the misguided path in their scientific quest), the scientists in question if paid to support only a particular (biased) outcome, should be held to some account. With fines and depending on severity disqualification from their profession.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Really, what do you expect exxon et al to say, do... look at the tobacco lobbies and their efforts to discredit studies and such that say cigarettes are not addictive using their own lobby-funded studies. In the rest of the world, and I would say most of the US, global warming is not controversial. Do wing nuts prop up their people to go on camera and say "it ain't happening". Sure, but so did the tobacco people. Most thinking people can see past this type of stuff and not get swept up in the propaganda wars. Unfortunately many do get suckered in by it. They have a lot of cash to throw at ads and lobbying these days due to the price of oil, and they want to keep that cash flowing. Like the addictive tobacco controversy... this one is dying. Expect to see more thrashing from the lobbies as it goes down for the count.
Won't change anything, and at least you can buy a nice winter coat.
As opposed to scientiests who depend on grant money that only comes in if they say the exact opposite.
;-) The scientific community has been quietly (and largely un-funded) been studying the problem of "global warming" and man's effects on it for over 100 years! The first well know scientist I'm aware of to really bring this forward was Svante Arrhenius. Here is an article he published on the topic in 1896. Far from raking in the money because of his research as you suggest, this Nobel prize winner was widely critisized and had a lot of trouble getting any presigious posts because of his views.
This should be added to the list of well known trolls!
It seems there are those (cannot imagine who they could POSSIBLY be) who want to convince the public that agreeing with or studying global warming is some new get rich quick scheme for scientists
Since him, thousands of other scientists have toiled in obscurity studying this field. Over the MANY years, these largely annonymous scientists have managed to compile and report on their data which points in some troubling directions for our future. Because of this, one would hope more and more money will go toward thier research (sadly today more money still goes toward trying to debunk them by organizations with VERY conflicting agendas).
Yes, there are some bad "scientists" out there which will sell themselves to any religious cult or multi-billon dollar company out there, but these are the VAST minority. You think scientists (especially climate scientists) have choosen that field for the celebrity and wealth that awaits??? Seriously???.
Please! Just please, let this stupid troll arguement die!
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
I just have wonder what is wrong in Exxon-Mobile. Every other major oil company in the world has admitted that global warming is for real and it's probably caused by man. In example Jorma Ollila who is the chairman of Shell has said it an interview that global warming is real and the only way to tackel it is to reduce carbon emissions. He continued and said that when he came to work in Shell, he was amazed by the concern that Shell employees had about global warming. So the question is what is wrong in Exxon-Mobile? Are their executives so locked into an equation (oil = money) that they have forgotten that it's really (oil = energy = money) and that a company can have other forms of energy sources than just oil?
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
The difference is whether the money is offered to do pure research into the issue, whatever the result, or whether it is offered on condition that the results further a specific viewpoint.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
From any other scientist who accepts a grant from a company - or from a government?
Clear, Dark Skies
Several European oil companies (most notably Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum) have gotten involved in other energy sources than just oil (hydrogen, solar, wind and others).
However, the US oil companies (such as ExxonMobil and Chevron) refuse to acknowledge that any energy sources other than oil even exist and are fighting tooth and nail all alternative energy sources and anything that would show that humans are killing the planet with fossil fuels.
Why aren't the US companies following the lead of the Europeans and trying to become world leaders in the new technologies before someone else (such as Shell or BP) beats them to it?
The problem with most institutions like CEI is that when they fund the research, they typically add a clause that says that the results of the research cannot be published without their explicit authorization. (This happens in other fields, as well.) This is most likely not the case with either Branson or the Sierra Club. If it is, I'll gladly call shenanigans on them, as well.
Also, Senator Inhofe is not exactly the best source for such information. His position on the relative importance of the environment is well documented.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Someone posted the difference between legitimate and illegitimate scientific funding yesterday in the comments on Slashdot. Legitimate funding is when you pay someone to do research in a specific area (eg. climate change). Illegitimate funding is when you pay someone to research a specific conclusion (eg. climate change is right/wrong), because then you're assuming the conclusion.
Dude! Ice that has existed for thousands of years is disappearing now. Arctic and antarctic species are in danger of extinction. Land masses that have been covered with ice since before the dawn of man are now available for farming! There's some real obvious signs of things that are just not right. Forget about the other obvious things like acid rain killing the fish... we somehow addressed that concern did we?
This isn't guilt for existance, it's guilt for being sloppy assholes who care little about the world we live in. There are ways to live and be clean about it. It's possibly "expensive" or otherwise a departure from what we are accustomed. So what?
I feel guilty. I can't afford to live in ways that are cleaner or I most certainly would. I can't do any of those nifty money-saving things like power from the sun or wind and earning money back from "the grid" because I live in an apartment. I cannot afford to buy a new, more efficient, car let alone a hybrid or electric. I can only WISH the people who make their money selling stuff to the world's population would care enough to take a hit from retooling and selling us stuff that's better for the world.
The alternatives are there. They just don't want to do it.
Well, many companies will control what can be published from the research they pay for, but when it comes to the government, that is not the case at all. They give you money to do research in a particular area. They do not give you money to reach particular conclusions. If they knew the conclusions you were going to reach, they wouldn't be funding you. Now do you see the difference?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I don't think that anybody is implying that scientists are choosing a position based on celebrity or _personal_ wealth. But let's face reality here. They aren't going to risk being ostracized from the community by disagreeing with the MAN-MADE global warming hysteria. Being a scientific skeptic of MAN-MADE global warming effectively excommunicates them.
Yes, it's getting warmer. Is it natural or man-made? What will the overall effects be and how will we adapt? Those are the questions that nobody has any real answers to. I can't believe that climatologists have anything other than the foggiest idea of what will happen. Some ice will melt, some places will get drier, some will get wetter. These are the same people who predicted that the 2006 hurricane season would be the worst ever. The hard fact here is that no matter what the temperature is doing, people are afraid of change. Something different? Must be bad!
This is nothing more than fear mongering and taking advantage of fact that most people can't think of anything that encompasses a time-scale larger than a generation. If we were in the middle of the last ice age, I'm sure the same people would be telling us that we'd all drown or burn to a crisp.
Well, God, obviously. He told me that he sent those ducks just to fuck with Micheal Savage. We had a good laugh. Then God asked if I wanted to strip down to our underwear and, you know, wrestle a bit so I told him I had to leave 'cause I had work in the morning. He always gets like that when he drinks.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The environmental groups would be perfectly happy to learn that climate change wasn't a problem, if the research showed that. Why? Because they have a number of other active priorities too. There are issues of species and habitat loss which have nothing to do with climate change - and which were sufficient to motivate donations to the environmental groups before there was any hint of climate change. There are also issues of various sorts of pollution which are unconnected to climate change. The environmental groups are overwhelmed with good causes, and if they can get themselves out from under a few of them, they will still have more than they can handle, and still have vast fund-raising appeal. They have no vested interest in global climate change being as serious an issue as science says it is; they are following the science, not leading it. But since they do need to follow the science, they fund it. ExxonMobil by contrast has a strong interest in discrediting the science. Consider: This is deliberately-misleading propaganda. He's implying that there are two equal groups. There aren't: Within science, 99+% of credentialed professionals agree there's a major problem, thus the new international report. Yet the AEI, by commissioning statements of doubt, wants to achieve some sort of 50/50 compromise between doubt and belief. That's to say, they want to deny the near-certainty of 99+% of the scientists qualified to make judgments in the field, and return the issue in the popular mind to the "he said, she said" status that ExxonMobil has so successfully promulgated in the media, science-ignorant as the communications majors who do most of the reporting are.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
According to Greenpeace's 2006 Annual report, they spent 4.3 milliion Euros on their 'climate' campaign.
This is pure advocacy advertising money, by the way, unlike Exxon which actually has to sell a product.
How is it that (Company A) offering $10,000 for proof of one side of an issue is irredeemable evilness, but (Advocacy Group) spending $5.6 million is a justified righteous crusade?
-Styopa
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Funny you should compare Big Tobacco with Big Oil's tactics.
I don't understand the emphasis on MAN-MADE as a reason to not take action. Even if global warming is not a MAN-MADE cause (which personally I find unlikely), is it something everybody wants to risk? Clearly pumping tons of carbon into the atmosphere is not good. We are smart enough to figure out better and cleaner ways to produce mass energy. Why don't we just clean up now regardless of the cause for the sake of the environment? In 50 - 100 years, it's going to be too late to be decide, "oh wow, it really was MAN-MADE, better start taking action now!".
The whole debate seems pointless to me, but I very well could be missing something.
You mean the same Cheney/Bush who, when he took office in 2000, created his own automotive energy project, moved the existing hybrid vehicle project( 7 years old ) into this new project, axed the old project, created and funded a hydrogen/hype vehicle project, then axed the hybrid vehicle project? The list goes on and on about the deals Cheney and Bush made which stalled or killed off efficiency projects and labs while making sure their buddies in the oil industry would grow their profits. Remember during the 2004 election campaign when Bush made a visit to a renewable energy lab in Colorado? It was found out a week earlier that he'd cut their funding and they were going to layoff over 40 employees right before Bush arrived. They got special funding in a matter of days before Bush arrived but the funding was only going to last about 1 year....
So this is not surprising. What gets my goat is that all the Republicans were just acting like lemmings and allowing Cheney/Bush to do whatever the wanted. Only now that he's a lame duck and the public FINALLY figured out Iraq is a screw-up, are some Republicans making statements against their( Cheney/Bush ) policies.
What a wonderful spineless group bunch of lemmings they are. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Would it be a 'bribe' for me to hire a criminal defense attorney and experts to poke holes in the prosecution's case if I were accused of a crime? That's how I see what's being described here. This is a company being accused of environmentally inimical behavior and wanting to find out if there are flaws in the case being made against it.
And just who is funding the global warming proponents? I ask this question regularily
.. .. while other scientists whose opposing theories hold just as valid are ignored
when one of these GW articles pop up on Slashdot and I invite everybody and all to do the
research and to find out.
The scientists who propose global warming theories out there are for the
most part likely to be sincere in their findings - but they are also the most
likely to be funded by the UN "Agenda 21" crowd through their network of Sustainable
Development cronies
at best, more often ridiculed and jeered by the publicity that same funding money
also buys. A less __selective__ reporting would not just unearth one single case of the
undesired sides shortcomings but in all fairness report on the funding that is
going to both sides, both the official as well as the underhanded. (As an exception
the official funding is far more interesting in this case).
Sustainable Development is going to be the pivot element of the UN global governance
that has come knocking and a lot of effort is being invested into it to make the
sustainable development - global warming paradigm package stick no matter what the opposition
to the scientifism it is based on.
Here are a couple of things people might want to check out who want to learn more
about this...
Here are a couple of points to google for "Sustainable Development" "Property rights"
"Agenda 21" "Joan Peros" (also try this on http://video.google.com/
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
A new study shows there may be a conflict of interest amongst some climate scientists.
The study, done over the course of the last 60 years, shows some startling conclusions:
- many climate scientists are employed by public universities, which themselves are funded by governments
- the employment of many climate scientists is contingent upon publication in referreed journals. Those journals themselves are paneled by other government-employed climate scientists
- a key finding of climate science research is that climate scientists should have more say in public policy
- another key finding of climate science research is that considerably more government money needs to be spent doing climate science research at institutions that pay climate scientists with government money
Some nerve ExxonMobil has in paying people to do research.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Galileo's many discoveries, especially the universe revolved around the sun and not the earth, put him at odds with the papacy and many universities. He was pressured into silence for almost two decades. Towards the end of his life he faced the Inquisition, was compelled to abjure, and spent his life imprisonment under house arrest.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
One thing of note from the report, which I can independently confirm: Since the last interglacial period peaked out at 4 to 6m higher seas, and 3 to 5 C higher temperatures, then in the absense of evidence suggesting we should peak elsewhere, we should assume that the global climate will max out at similar levels, apart from any human infulence. (After that happens, maybe the IPCC can tell the politicians how to make new laws to encourage greenhouse gasses emission, to somehow keep the next ice age from coming along and killing us all.)
cash to right wing orgs are bribes?
It's ok for government agencies to fund reseach limited to proving global warming, but not for disproving it.
Nice double standard.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
"Predictions are not based on just extrapolating a past trend, you know. They also involve modeling the physical processes involved in climate. You can't just point to some part of a time series where there was a variation from the normal and claim it is inherently unpredictable. On the basis of time series analysis alone, it would be. On the basis of physics, it's a different matter."
OK, do a physics experiment to prove the significance of anthropogenic global warming. Oh. You can't do that? You have a simulation instead? And why should I believe your simulation? What if it doesn't model all the physical processes involved? What if it models them incorrectly? How can you possibly validate it? I know! Let's feed it with some past conditions and see if it can predict what we already know happened next! Oh... it gets that wrong? But this time, just coincidentally with a Kyoto treaty that targets the developed world and exempts the undeveloped world, it works. It's got physics. So, although it fails to retrodict the past, I should surrender to Chinese and Indian economic hegemony immediately anyway instead of waiting for them to overtake us normally... It's got physics.
That's OK, I've got a devil-mask here that keeps me safe from witches. I understand. If only more people did.
--
phunctor backs away slowly
$10K is a pretty damn paltry bribe. $100K research grants are pretty common for those in the sciences, with $1M+ programs not unheard of. As for personal salary, a PhD college professor in the sciences is easily at $100k+/year when you include summer salary.
But then they normally have to do some research. Here they only have to sit down an evening to write an essay.
To that end, I have sold my car in 2003 and living without one ever since. That's rather difficult, as I live in Toronto uptown, but I found that I can easily rent (Enterprise is my favourite) when I absolutely need to; my life and my health have improved and am generally happier this way, not to mention that it's much cheaper. I also try to avoid buying gas from Esso (for the few times I need to rent), because I disapprove of Exxon and what they stand for.
That being said, I believe that Exxon is doing a public service by spending their money this way. If I were a scientist offered money to play the devil's advocate, I would jump at the opportunity. This is because good ideas and good science do not come from unanimity. Dissent, if taken seriously, can only improve the scientific discourse and is the best sanity check against groupthink.
Maybe it's because I lived my formative years in a communist dictatorship, or maybe it's because I loved debating and miss judging those university tournaments, but I often found that I learned the most about a subject by listening to dissenting opinions - opinions I disagreed with.
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that ones work is terribly important." -BRussell